Why don't you demonstrate?

 
feldenkraislesson16.jpg
 

On video vs. audio:

I often get asked about demonstrating movements. This is a common and understandable question because we are taught in our culture that there's a correct and incorrect way to do things.

We don't demonstrate in Feldenkrais because you are not performing a movement, you are using your own sensorimotor feedback to solve the movement puzzle.

In this type of bottom-up, relational learning, we never impose correction from without. We help you discover comfort, balance, and self-awareness from within. The lessons guide you, never tell you off.

Motor-control learning means experimenting, like a baby learning to walk.

In this process, we use classic motor-control learning with variables and constraints to help your brain find new options and choices. Someone else's habits, history, injuries, and strategies will be different from yours, and it may not be appropriate—or possible!—for you to mimic another person's strategy.

Ideally, through practicing Feldenkrais you become adept at generating new movement patterns on your own so you're not stuck in the painful ones.

What this means

What this means in practice is that if the suggestion is to bring your arm out to 90 degrees and that's painful, stop before you get to the painful place. You adapt the lesson to meet your needs rather than "perform" a movement at the cost of your comfort. That is not learning, that is straining, and we all have a PhD in strain already. I always tell my students, "Your nervous system does not learn if you are mean to it," and they tell me it takes at least two years to believe it!

I think you'll find that the audio programs have clear, easy-to-follow directions (at least mine do!) so your nervous system can discern the variables we are exploring. Here are a couple more posts on this question that might help:

The point of a lesson is not to study someone else's strategy, but to discover your own. Imitating is not learning.